Search Notes

3/11/2017

MBA Notes - Media Planning Process

Question - Define media planning, also explain steps in development of media plan.

Answer

The word Media came from the Latin word "Middle". Media carry message to or from a targeted audience and can add meaning to the message.

Media Planning, in advertising, is a series of decisions involving the delivery of message to the targeted audience. Media Plan, is the plan that details the usage of media in an advertising campaign including costs, running dates, markets, reach, frequency, rationales, and strategies.

Steps in Development of Media Plan

1. Market Analysis

Every media plan begins with the market analysis or environmental analysis.Complete review of internal and external factors is required to be done. At this stage media planner try to identify answers of the following questions:

Who is the target audience?

What internal and external factors may influence the media plan?

Where and when to focus the advertising efforts?

The target audience can be classified in terms of age, sex, income, occupation, and other variables. The classification of target audience helps media planner to understand the media consumption habit, and accordingly choose the most appropriate media or media mix.

2. Establishing Media Objective

Media objectives describes what you want the media plan to accomplish. There are five key media objectives that a advertiser or media planner has to consider - reach, frequency, continuity, cost, and weight.

Reach - Reach refers to the number of people that will be exposed to to a media vehicle at least once during a given period of time.

Frequency - Frequency refers to the average number of times an individual within target audience is exposed to a media vehicle during a given period of time.

Continuity - It refers to the pattern of advertisements in a media schedule. Continuity alternatives are as follows:

Continuous: Strategy of running campaign evenly over a period of time.

Pulsing: Strategy of running campaign steadily over a period of time with intermittent increase in advertising at certain intervals, as during festivals or special occasions like Olympics or World-Cup.

Discontinuous: Strategy of advertising heavily only at certain intervals, and no advertising in the interim period, as in case of seasonal products.

Cost - It refers to the cost of different media

Weight - Weight refers to total advertising required during a particular period.

3. Determining Media Strategies

Media strategy is determined considering the following:

Media Mix - From the wide variety of media vehicles, the advertiser can employ one vehicle or a mix suitable vehicles.

Target Market

Scheduling - It shows the number of advertisements, size of advertisements, and time on which advertisements to appear.

Selection of Media/Media Mix: Considering the collected information and ad-budget, media or media mix is selected which suits the requirements of both - target audience and advertiser.

Negotiation: Price of media is negotiated to procure media at the lowest possible price.

Issuing Ad - copy to media: Ad-copy is issued to the media for broadcast or telecast

Monitoring performance of Media: Advertiser has to monitor whether the telecast or broadcast of ad is done properly as decided.

Payment - Finally, it is the responsibility of advertiser to make payment of media bills on time.

5. Evaluation and Follow-up

Evaluation is essential to assess the performance of any activity. Two factors are important in evaluation of media plan:

How successful were the strategies in achieving media objectives?

Was the media plan successful in accomplishing advertising objective?

Successful strategies help build confidence and serve as reference for developing media strategies in future, and failure is thoroughly analyzed to avoid mistakes in future.

About Manish Patidar

The author of this blog is Manish Patidar, he is an MBA in Marketing. By profession he is a professor, teaching MBA students in India. You can contact Manish Patidar at manishblogspace@gmail.com or enotesmba.info@gmail.com